Designer Giorgio Armani and Vogue editor Anna Wintour are squaring up to one another. The future shape of the fashion industry is at stake

It started as a spat amid the superheroes rather than the supermodels. Giorgio Armani, the Italian designer with a £1 billion fashion empire, and Anna Wintour, the British-born doyenne of catwalk journalism, had come together at Milan fashion week to announce a collaboration on an art exhibition in New York this summer.

They posed together smiling against a backdrop of statues of such caped crusaders as Batman and Superman and mannequins wearing the haute couture costumes and cowls they had inspired. Wintour wore her usual Prada; Armani sported a characteristic blue jacket.

But then the flak hit the frocks.

As Wintour, who this year celebrates 20 years as editor of American Vogue, sat tight-lipped beside him last week, the ever-tanned Armani announced that she meant nothing to him.

"I cannot understand why so many people dislike her," he said. "I am indifferent to her."